The designated hitter came into being in 1973.  That means we have now had forty-six seasons of the DH in baseball.  Yet, you will still find people who hate the designated hitter and consider it an abomination.  The reason they give, as I'm sure you've heard, is always the same.  "The DH takes all the strategy out of the game."

Well, we're all entitled to our opinion.  But it's interesting to me that the people who hate the DH because "it takes all the strategy out of the game" are quite often the same people who hate defensive shifts, openers, pitching changes to create favorable matchups, and every other recent innovation with which the "stat nerds" with their "analytics" are "ruining the game".

Again, we're all entitled to our opinion.  But if what you really love about baseball is strategy, rather than just tradition, you should love the modern game of baseball.  We've seen more new strategies in the last few years than I've seen in my entire life as a baseball fan.  I'm not totally sold on all of them, but that's not the point.  The point is that if what you love about baseball is strategy, you should be having the time of your life.  Every night you're seeing all kinds of innovative strategies being played out right before your eyes.  It's incredible.  I don't think it's going too far at all to say that what we're seeing now is a golden age of baseball strategy.

I love the baseball I grew up with in the sixties and seventies.  It was a great game.  But it's a great game now, too.  I feel sorry for people who claim to love baseball but are so wedded to the past that they can't see that.  They're not hurting me, but they are hurting themselves.  There's a great game of baseball going on, and they're missing out on it.